People who live in the post-totalitarian system know only too well that the question of whether one or several political parties a...re in power, and how these parties define and label themselves, is of far less importance than the question of whether or not it is possible to live like a human being.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Prestige is the shadow of money and power. Where these are, there it is. Like the national market for soap or automobiles and the ...enlarged arena of federal power, the national cash-in area for prestige has grown, slowly being consolidated into a truly national system.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Just as the French of the nineteenth century invested their surplus capital in a railway-system in the belief that they would make... money by it in this life, in the thirteenth they trusted their money to the Queen of Heaven because of their belief in her power to repay it with interest in the life to come.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

I am willing, for a money consideration, to test this physical strength, this nervous force, and muscular power with which I've be...en gifted, to show that they will bear a certain strain. If I break down, if my brain gives way under want of sleep, my heart ceases to respond to the calls made on my circulatory system, or the surcharged veins of my extremities burst--if, in short, I fall helpless, or it may be, dead on the track, then I lose my money.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

It has been the struggle between privileged men who have managed to get hold of the levers of power and the people in general with... their vague and changing aspirations for equality, for justice, for some kind of gentler brotherhood and peace, which has kept that balance of forces we call our system of government in equilibrium.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The fascinating thing to a dispassionate observer about the structure of life in the Soviet Union is that in their efforts to prod...uce an unknown that we may let its ideologists call Socialism the Communist dictators have produced a brutal approximation of monopoly Capitalism, a system that has all the disadvantages of our own, with none of the palliatives which come to us from surviving competition and from the essential division of economic and political power which has so far made it possible for the humane traditions of the Western world to continue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Men have defined the parameters of every subject. All feminist arguments, however radical in intent or consequence, are with or ag...ainst assertions or premises implicit in the male system, which is made credible or authentic by the power of men to name.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The individual protests against the world, but he doesn't get beyond protest, he is just a single protester. When he wants to be m...ore than that, he has to counter power with power, he has to oppose the system with another system.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The solar system has no anxiety about its reputation, and the credit of truth and honesty is as safe; nor have I any fear that a s...keptical bias can be given by leaning hard on the sides of fate, of practical power, or of trade, which the doctrine of Faith cannot down-weigh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »